


Green Door (The One Suitcase Remix)

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, M/M, Old mutants in love, Remix, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 09:49:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1600463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a long time. Retirement isn't such a bad idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Door (The One Suitcase Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrkinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrkinch/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Miniatures](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168052) by [mrkinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrkinch/pseuds/mrkinch). 
  * In response to a prompt by [mrkinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrkinch/pseuds/mrkinch) in the [remixmadness2014](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixmadness2014) collection. 



> Thanks to **redacted** for looking this over, as ever ♥

"He's not here," McCoy says, and Erik freezes halfway in and out of the window of Charles' study. He hadn't sensed the chair, but he assumed that meant Charles was elsewhere in the house. A closer look reveals the chair is nowhere to be found.

He stares blankly at McCoy, sitting at Charles' desk. McCoy stares back, unamused but obviously unsurprised.

"He's at the house in the mountains," McCoy finally says. "He's there for the summer. He told me to let you know if you came looking for him."

"The summer?" Erik asks. They weren't the words he meant to say, the rant against Charles' ideals, the poorly invented excuse for the visit.

"Even you must know that teachers get the summer off," McCoy says. "Anyway, the summer for now, but who knows. He talks about retirement with some frequency. It's been a long time, you know."

Erik knows. He knows deeply. He's felt every second of the last fifty years, the years they've spent apart.

"Anyway." McCoy turns back to the computer on the desk. "I have an article to peer review. You know where he is if you want to see him. If you do see him, remind him it's been a long time. Retirement isn't such a bad idea."

He looks up again, catching Erik's eyes, and raises his eyebrows. 

Erik can take a hint, but that doesn't mean he's ready to concede to Hank McCoy. He whips his cape around his shoulders and floats back out the window to pack a suitcase for the mountains.

Just one. A small one. Maybe just for a weekend.

***

The house in the mountains has a large wrap around porch, a lush garden, and cheerful bright green doors. Sunlight streams through the trees, birds sing and small animals rustle in the woods that envelope the house on all sides. Erik has been here before, but just once. It was cold and isolated and dark, the landscape covered with snow. Charles slept nearly the whole week Erik was there, recuperating from a psychic battle in the most remote location McCoy could find. Erik saw little of the house outside of the bedroom, where he sat by Charles' side and whispered foolish promises that he hoped soothed the worst of the nightmares that made him shake in his sleep.

He walks slowly around it now, memorizing the details he didn't bother to observe the first time around. It's rustic in a bourgeois way, in a way that speaks more to having enough money to replicate the look of an old hunting cabin rather than any actual practicality. In the garden is a sturdy wrought-iron picnic table with an umbrella over it and only one chair. The surface is inlaid with the pattern of a chessboard. He wraps his awareness around it, smiling at the strength and purity, then reaching out to lay his fingers on the edge. It's warm from the sun. Everything is warm from the sun. Erik is warm from the sun.

He feels Charles' wheelchair in the kitchen, moving towards the door that faces Erik now, up either three stairs or a winding ramp, high enough up that Erik has to crane his head back when the door opens.

It opens only enough for Charles to lean against it, smiling. Erik remembers seeing his lips curl into a smile for the first time, treading water as they waited for the Coast Guard to pluck them from the sea. They were so red then, so full and sweet looking that Erik wanted to kiss him even then. The color has faded over time, but Charles' lips remain full and soft and sweet and wicked and perfect against his own. The top three buttons of Charles shirt are open and he looks looser, more casual than Erik remembers seeing him in a long time. The near-constant wrinkles of exhaustion and worry are absent from his face, replaced by the laugh lines around his eyes that Erik likes to trace in his weaker moments. He has a few days' worth of beard growth, shaped and maintained in such a way that Erik can tell he plans to keep it. It's not the ginger of his youth, but white and dignified. Erik longs to brush the skin of Charles' cheek and stray into the bristles, to see if it's as soft as it looks.

"You don't have to simply stand in the garden all day, you know," Charles finally says. "Won't you come in?"

"I will," Erik says. His voice is surprisingly weak and unsteady to his own ears.

"And stay?" Charles asks, always greedy for all he can have.

"For a time," Erik says. He brought only one suitcase. Of course, all of his belongings fit neatly into one suitcase, but that means nothing.

"Then I will be happy to have you for a time," Charles says, because Charles is as patient as he is greedy, patient and maddeningly sure of himself and of everyone around him. Sure enough in Erik, at least, to install a wrought iron chess table in a sunny garden with a chair ready for Erik's use and enough space on the other side for a wheelchair.

Erik shakes his head, but he's smiling.

"Come inside," Charles says, gesturing towards the house and Erik helplessly, effortlessly, gladly walks up the three stairs and towards his retirement.


End file.
